Sword of Doom, directed by Kihachi Okamoto. It's not underground, a boring art film, or nine hours long. It is good and doomy. Says so right in the title.

Watership Down is absolutely brilliant, but the same company also animated an anti-vivisection film called PLAGUE DOGS, which makes Watership Down seem like Weekend At Bernie's. I just recently download that Art Garfunkel song, too. Theater of Tragedy should cover it.

All of you who think that Requiem For A Dream is depressing (and I agree, even if I think it's a lot of style over substance) you should check out another film adapted from the same author: LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN. It is b-l-e-a-k!

LILYA 4-EVA is definitely a wake-up call to the plight of girls caught in the white slave trade. I think the ending is oddly uplifting, though, just as with BREAKING THE WAVES. After the onslaught of tragic events those films detail for the majority of their length, any escape is a welcome development.

TO LIVE by Zhang Yimou is also very tragic. It's the story of a ne'er-do-well who makes decisions that affect generations of his family. It was called LIFETIMES in China, and was severely edited. Ironically, it underplays the severity as though to make a statement that tragedy is just another part of life that sooner or later we all have to face. It's very zen-like in that respect. And mentally retarded kids break my heart.

There is an exceptionally gory film from Japan called MERMAID IN A MANHOLE, which was part of the GUINEA PIG series, and aside from being thoroughly disgusting is incredibly depressing.

1984 and Pink Floyd's THE WALL were part of a slit-your-wrists double feature that we used to run at the Brattle in Cambridge. BRAZIL is in that camp, but it is too whimsical to be totally soul-destroying.

Any film that puts the protagonist through hell without a glimmer of hope can be deemed depressing. Sometimes those films have an overt point of view and sometimes they are merely a bystander's view of events that leave a point of view up to the audience. Obviously IRREVERSIBLE is such a film, but again, the ending is somewhat uplifting after all the nastiness that precedes it.

NAKED is a sour world view wrapped in a tour-de-force performance by David Thewlis. Mike Leigh's films are all fairly downers except for his musical. So you can take your pick of SECRETS & LIES and LIFE IS SWEET, too.

One of my 5 favorite films, REMAINS OF THE DAY, is a treatise on how to waste a life. It's a brilliant film containing one of the greatest screen performances in the history of the medium. Marlon Brando had nothing on Anthony Hopkins, who gives the most restrained realization of a butler's existence -a job in service if performed correctly is perfected at the very expense of the servant's quality of life, or at least gratification.

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST is like HARROLD AND MAUDE in that both are in some way black comedies -less so with Cuckoo's Nest, but there is a glimmer of hope in both. AWAKENINGS like Cuckoo's Nest is a film about mental health and medical pathology. It's filled with hope but also with the reality that there are a lot of things that we can't cure. Movies about descent into madness are compelling for me, and I think that insanity is a very real fear that isn't explored realistically very often. I don't find DONNIE DARKO depressing necessarily, but I do think it's one of the best films about teenage madness ever made. I also have to give a little credit to BUTTERFLY EFFECT for being way better than I anticipated in what was marketed as a popcorn film.

Any film that presents a hell-is-for-children message gets to me. Whether about mistreatment of a physical, sexual or mental nature, I find them deeply affecting and hard to watch. Sometimes an adult is given the personality of a child, which can be very frustrating to witness. I'm not talking about the Freaky Friday and Vice Versa movies; I'm talking about a film like A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, in which a grown woman has a borderline personality disorder that has stunted her personality development. The inability for the people around her to deal with her condition is presented in a very realistic way. In real life, we aren't a cast of heroes and villains. We all do selfish, mean and stupid things of which we're not proud. Cassavete's film explores those facets of the human condition and Gena Rowlands performance is note perfect. It's an amazing film, and it depresses me greatly.

I don't find films like THE FOUNTAIN to be depressing because I think there is an important message in it. I recently saw the Guy Ritchie film REVOLVER which had a profound impact on me. It's a bit heavy handed perhaps but is was to me like watching a Jodorowsky Gangster flic. I loved it, but it totally bummed me out. There are very real life messages in that film, and it gave me a wakeup call that I'm still contemplating.

I agree with highlysatanic666 Lilya 4-Ever is a gem (it even made me bought Rammstein's Mutter)

BUMP !

its funny cause that was actualy the first thought that came into my head when i saw this topic

Actualy one of the most dipresing and disturbing moments in film i ever watched was when i was six years old or something and watched M.A.S.H. the movie and was horrifide when i got to the part were hock-eye admits that he watched the woman strangle her own child to escape the enimy patroles

this is a great fucking film.
probably my favorite samurai flick
that wasn't made by Kurosawa,
and I like a LOT of samurai flicks.

whoever mentioned Naked was right on...
I was reading the thread and thinking I was going to mention it.

I Stand Alone and Irreversible are about as bleak as it gets- to the point that I lose all interest.
Same thing with Haneke's films - I tried to watch Funny Games recently (the original) and turned it off with half an hour left.
If you don't give a damn about any of the characters, what's the point?

Fat Girl might be another good choice for you dudes,
um...Gummo? I like my sad leavened with humor, plus it has an amazing soundtrack.

and pretty much everything by Werner Herzog.
Fitzcarraldo is probably my favorite film,
and all the films he made with Klaus Kinski are super intense and vivid.

AUDITION, a great movie by Takashi Miike, weird at will and pretty depressive especially the end

One of the most viewer-friendly Miike-films. Great.

"Romance" by Catherine Breillat

The most depressing movie i've ever seen that i highly recommend is probably Leaving Las Vegas. A very bleak, despairing film in my opinion. It has Nicolas Cage in it. He plays a lifeless, suicidal alcoholic who basically loses everything (family, job etc) and goes to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. I don't know if anyone here's seen it before but i think it's a great film. Cage got an oscar for it too i think

Just about anything that Hollywood has done in the past decade that deals with shit that's been done before and/or is a remake. I'm not sure about the rest of you but I have a hard time finding anything more depressing than that.

* "Johnny Got His Gun" (M@sterpiece)

* "Requiem for a dream"

* "Eraserhead".. This one is not only depressive, but psychedelic and disturbing too.. (DooMy!!!)

"Eraserhead" is directed (and written) by David Lynch. You can watch a short film -by him- on youtube to get an idea (many of his movies are psychedelic and depressive):

=>"The grandmother", Uploaded in parts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VaI1v0CIlA

yeah i've seen eraserhead before. what a mindfuck that film was. Haha. But all of David Lynch's films are really =p

Basketball Diaries and Midnight Express

Mystic RIver has one of the saddest and heaviest endings I have seen in a movie. Amazing movie that got oscars for best actor and best supporting actor.

I saw this movie yesterday and yes amazing atmosphere.

"Gerry" by Gus van Zant was very bleak, even if not depressive in the "classic" sense...

SOMBRE by French author Grandrieux (yes, the image is that dark, it's normal)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1rmbBy5 ... re=related

and surely Seul contre tous by Gaspar Noé

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8VmXggy ... re=related